The use of logical fallacies in the media today is present in many of the things we read, hear, or watch. In commercials especially, logical fallacies are used to try to convince the target buyer that they need whatever they’re selling.
In the DirecTV commercials, they use rhetorical strategies like post hoc, and slippery slope to sell their TV system. In their commercials, it’s usually a series of events that happen as a result of having a bad cable company. In one of them, it starts out like, “When you pay too much for cable, you throw things. When you throw things, people think you have anger issues. When people think you have anger issues, your schedule clears up. When your schedule clears up, you grow a scraggly beard. When you grow a scraggly beard, you start taking in stray animals. And when you start taking in stray animals you can’t stop taking in stray animals. Stop taking in stray animals. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV.”
This is a great use of post hoc, which mistakes correlation for causation.- assuming that when one thing after another happens, it was specifically caused by the previous occurrence. Slippery slope is also involved in this commercial because it’s saying that if you don’t have DirecTV, a series of events are gonna happen with an inevitably bad outcome.
A majority of commercials these days have one or multiple logical fallacies hidden in them. Some commercials do it for humor for example the slippery slopes that Direct TV used, while others use stereotypical statements in order to get the attention of a certain group of viewers, that can be sometimes hurtful towards others. Great Post.
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